Typically in business when you teach somebody how to do a new or changed job, you explain their role and tasks and you put them to work.  Then they screw it up—because they don’t really know what they’re doing—and once you find out, you correct them.  You clean up their mess, explain their job further, and you put them back to work.  Then, they screw it up less.  So you correct them again—because they still don’t know their job—you clean up a smaller mess, and you teach them again.  Then they go back work, and they screw it up a little less.  And so you clean up a little less mess and reteach.  And so on—with them screwing up a little less, and you re-teaching a little less—until the person becomes able to work independently and correctly according to the change vision.

The problem with this default process is that it takes a long time and it’s expensive. It can also get frustrating for everyone involved, stymie the needed change, and lead to loss of talent and productivity.   Why go through all that when there’s a better way?

Tools in the field of knowledge transfer have proven time and again to offer a quicker and clearer solution that helps change managers implement change.

What we do at The Steve Trautman Co. is we say, “Teach them—and then interrupt the process.” Teach your employees on the job how to do their new or changed roles and then TEST them thru a discussion framed by a series of simple questions.  If they pass the test, put them to work using that technical or professional skill.  What you’ll find is that when they go to work, they will be a lot less stupid.  They will make a lot fewer mistakes.  And you’ll have to correct them less and clean up less mess.   Then when you reteach them, you’ll be just fine tuning.  In other words, with a knowledge transfer process and tools, the cycle from “I don’t know” to “I know” is shorter.

THE SKILL DEVELOPMENT PLAN (SDP): A Tool to Create the Measurable Plan to Transfer New Skills & Knowledge

In Step 1 of our knowledge transfer process for change management you use the Knowledge Silo Matrix (KSM) to assess workforce risk (learn more in series post 3).  Having identified in this previous step which employees need what knowledge and skills to make the change, and which experts will be the standard bearers and on-the-job mentors to them, you now move to Step 2: creating a plan to grow the needed skills and bench strength within your team.  At my company we call this the Skill Development Plan (SDP).

The SDP is a custom, date-driven inventory and schedule of skills and knowledge that must be learned in a given job role—and the resources available and test questions needed to confirm that knowledge of the right way to do a job has been transferred.

First, we list the skills relevant to the changed role. (A skill is defined as something someone can “do” as opposed to just “know” and can be explained by a qualified mentor in about 1 – 2 hours.)  We then sequence the skill list by order of importance based on risk, add each skill’s mentor and other learning resources (e.g. documentation, online training), then create an assessment for the skill.  We’ve worked hard over the decades to devise a simple, quick verbal test that shows whether an employee is ready to do new work.  The result is a set of knowledge transfer “test questions” that are adept at checking for the wisdom and tacit knowledge behind any task (e.g. “The relationship between  X and   Y (how it fits in the product or service cycle).” “The first  # things to check when troubleshooting anything”).  We help your mentors choose five appropriate test questions from our larger set to use to assess an apprentice’s readiness, and then affix a date by which the apprentice should be able to correctly answer each skill’s test questions.  (To learn more about using the SDP, see our Knowledge Transfer Solution Step 2.)   This produces a clear, structured, and measureable plan for teaching employees the changed behaviors you expect to see in a job.

But a clear plan is not enough.

THE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER WORKSHOP (KTW): Learn to Act on the Plan

Envisioned change usually break downs at the point when you put your plan into action in a real-life, busy, work environment.  Just because someone is an expert at what they do and understands what’s expected of them on the road ahead does NOT mean they know how to teach this to others.  Your experts need to learn how to be on-the-job mentors—and any good knowledge transfer process will include this step.  Our Step 3, the Knowledge Transfer Workshop (KTW), provides 15 proven techniques to transfer an expert’s information, know-how, and tacit knowledge to their apprentice coworkers—while the mentor maintains a regular workload.  (To learn more about the KTW, see our Knowledge Transfer Solution Step 3.)

As change managers, we know it’s true that the day your apprentice employees can pass a skill test is not the day they are experts at the job.  But more important to effective change, we know that if they can’t pass their mentor’s test, they are going to go screw things up if put to work.  You are going to have to correct them and put out big fires and clean up big messes.  Our knowledge transfer process shortcuts that whole learning cycle and typically reduces the ramp time to productivity in a new role by 50%.

This concludes my 4-part blog series.  Change management is obviously a complex topic, so I plan revisit it in future posts with more stories and details.

SUMMARY: Successful change management requires a clear, measurable plan for teaching a workforce the changed behaviors you wish to see—and your standard bearers need to understand how to teach their expertise on the job and test that the knowledge was transferred.  The tools of knowledge transfer—such as the KSM, the SPD, and the KTW—give change managers the process and structure to do this and keep your change on track.

COMING UP NEXT WEEK: Our special blog feature—”Steve Trautman’s 5 Questions with…”—which regularly showcases a senior executive’s thoughts on knowledge transfer and talent management. Next week: Shari Keivit, Manager of Strategic Learning for General Mills.

Independent studies have shown that only 10% of what an employee needs to learn to do their job well comes from formal classroom training (e.g. certificate programs, workshops).*  The other 90% requires a structured process and an organization with a culture of talent development.  Because, regardless of occupation, an employee’s  remaining job learning comes from 70% being on the job day to day (e.g. asking questions, observing experienced coworkers), and 20% on-the-job structured mentoring. 

Here at The Steve Trautman Co., we live and breathe solutions for this 90% area every day.   We help organizations make on-the-job learning happen faster, with less stress, and with greater predictability and consistency—and ensure that your employees are learning the most important knowledge first.  

We often hear people in a wide range of industries say, “We’re not very good at mentoring” (the 20%).  Or “It takes too long to rely on learning-by-osmosis.” (the 70%).   With knowledge transfer, this does not need to be the case.  Our 3-step solution provides a clear methodology to assess your talent risks and run quick and accountable peer mentoring programs.  Typically, our simple tools will speed your onboarding time to productivity by about half.   And, we show you how to become a learning organization, which makes the remaining 70% of job learning easier on everyone.

So for those of you who heard Steve speak, please let us know what you think. And for those not attending ASTD 2012, we’ll be adding Steve’s talk to our site’s knowledge transfer resource section in the near future.

Check it out.

*The 70/20/10 learning concept was developed by Morgan McCall, Robert W. Eichinger, and Michael M. Lombardo at The Center for Creative Leadership, and is specifically mentioned in The Career Architect Development Planner, 3rd edition, by Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger.  Today this 70/20/10 breakout is the widely accepted principle of training and development professionals worldwide.



A major European manufacturer planned to build an oil rig as part of the company’s new strategy.  This project was the first of its kind for the manufacturer, and many more oil rigs were planned for construction to follow.  The company had a clear strategy and solid reasoning for why they needed to be building oil rigs—but no one on their team had actually ever built one before.  My company was brought in to help this client identify and mitigate its talent risks, because it is a recipe for failure when leadership asks a workforce to make a change without clarifying employees’ new roles, setting clear standards for what new behaviors are expected, and providing a way for employees to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to the make the change.

Expose Knowledge Silos of Critical Expertise and Skills Needed by a Team to Make a Change
Good change management needs to identify the expertise, skills, and best practices that are needed by employees to perform their jobs in the new, right way.  At The Steve Trautman Co. we call these “knowledge silos”—groups of skills (typically 20 – 100) that a person needs to learn in order to work independently at their job.  A silo can consist of technical expertise, tools, processes, products, standards, customers, and physical locations related to doing a job.  Risk in each knowledge silo—meaning, shortages of how-to knowledge and skills, or the wrong standards of application—need to be assessed and mitigated or a change will fail.  We’ve looked around (diligently) and we’ve yet to find a better framework to assess this risk than our Knowledge Silo Matrix.

COMPLETE A KNOWLEDGE SILO MATRIX (KSM)
The Knowledge Silo Matrix is a framework that provides managers with straightforward answers to a few crucial questions will derail change if left unclear:

• “What really is the DAILY WORK of a given team or group, including the technical and professional skills needed on the job?”
• “How will that be DIFFERENT after the organizational change?”
• “WHO knows how to do this work the new, right way and will become the standard bearer to others for a given skill?”
• “What CONFLICTS might exist if people who were doing the same job in different groups might now have to work together?”
• “Which workers need to LEARN critical skills and knowledge in order to be able do their job this new way?”

The KSM inventories—through a simple Q&A process with managers and peers—the knowledge silos that exist within any working team (typically about 5 -12 employees per KSM), and shows the level of employee expertise in each knowledge silo (see the color-coded key for Figure 1).  Key roles in a change are clarified within the framework: for each silo, the person who is to be the standard bearer for the new way—the mentor to others—is designated, as are the apprentice coworkers.  A team should typically have one mentor/standard to follow per group of related skills (silo).  The only time it is okay to have multiple mentors (purples) in a silo is if you are confident the multiple mentors are all working consistent with the same standard. [For more info, see our free demo with instructions for completing your own KSM.]

The KSM is a simple tool that change managers can use identify team risks and clarify roles in change. The framework charts the technical and professional expertise of workers against a job role's necessary knowledge areas.

Prioritize Your Risks
Then, looking at the simple completed grid, risks and priorities can be assessed.

Completing the KSM shows where your risk to successful change at the worker level lies.  If you ask a team to change but only give vague platitudes about what change is needed (i.e. “be more innovative”), instead of clearly defining what work needs to meet the new standard—you have risk.  Likewise, if you ask workers to conform to a new standard but don’t provide them access to the needed knowledge and skills to meet that standard (i.e. a designated mentor for on-the-job training, certification programs)—you have risk.  Similarly, if you expect one expert to mentor an entire team in almost every knowledge area of a job—you have risk (burnout).  And if you ask a team to change but have not or cannot define the new “right way” of doing things (i.e. if you do not have an expert or best practice to follow)—you have a very big risk that your change will fail do to unclear expectations.

My team used the KSM with our European manufacturing client as the first step in mitigating risks to their strategy implementation and the building of the oil rig, and the tool proved pivotal in turning around what had become a messy and stalled change.  By clarifying roles and expectations and identifying critical priorities, the KSM is the first step to eliminating most of the risk and randomness associated with organizational change initiatives.

SUMMARY: To more successfully manage change in your organization, complete a Knowledge Silo Matrix for your team.  This tool will expose silos of critical information and skills that will derail your change if left unaddressed and will clarify employee roles and expectations for the road ahead.

COMING NEXT—PART 4: How to create and act on a plan for growing the skills needed by your frontline workers to make the change, and management tools for bringing accountability to your change effort.

The Senior VP of Marketing for a major retailer recently came to me with a change management issue.  Her company had seen huge growth in the last ten years and was still adapting to the fact that they are a 2 billion dollar business.  Essentially, they were growing up—and this had introduced a number of business challenges, including the need to restructure how they did their work.  In addition, they were in the midst of a top-level leadership change.  Finally, there were tensions and frustrations between Marketing and their e-Commerce division due to lack of role clarification.

After spending some time identifying core problems, I told them, “Look, your people don’t get the Big Picture,” and I pointed out how catastrophic that could be to their change effort.  When people aren’t getting the big picture they have trouble clarifying roles, defining boundaries, and focusing on the right priorities.

I explained that if they wanted to navigate through all this change, they’d first have to make sure that everyone in the division got the big picture, starting with her leadership team and then working down to the front line.

First, Clarify the “Big Picture”
To set the foundation for a healthy team it’s necessary that everybody “gets” the big picture.  And the only one way to test whether everybody gets the big picture is to ask.

THE BIG PICTURE QUESTIONS
See what happens when everyone on your team tries to answer these questions:

1. Who are the customers or customer segments we serve, listed in priority order?
2. What are the products or services we provide now, and which ones, if any, need to change as we implement the current strategy?
3. With whom (and in what priority) do we partner in delivering our products or services?
4. Who are our competitors (listed in priority order), why is each considered a threat, and what can we learn from them?
5. How do we measure our success now, and how might that change in the future?
6. What is the relevant history that affects current strategy?
7. Which external trends or issues (such as market, economic, societal, political, or environmental factors) are important to our strategy?
8. How does our organizational structure support our strategy?
9. What are three things our unit is doing to support the strategy?

Start with the leaders on your team.  Put the questions up on a whiteboard and try to answer them together.  It should only take about 90 minutes to answer this list of 9 questions—but in some organizations it can take hours or even days.  It can take much longer when there is no agreement on the answers to the questions, but if you can’t agree to these answers, it is a sign that you’re probably not aligned in other ways as well.

The senior VP at the retailer I’ve been working with is an excellent manager who has been with her company for more than 15 years in another capacity.  Having just taken over Marketing, she realized that she couldn’t answer these simple questions with confidence.  So how could she expect her people to?  How can a team make good decisions if they aren’t even clear on questions of customer priorities and service levels?  How can they understand their roles in supporting the corporate strategy if they don’t know which competitors are most important or how to measure their success?

Answer the Big Picture Questions with Your Whole Team, Top to Bottom
Your senior leadership should agree on their answers and create a short presentation. Then lower level leaders can customize a version of the big picture Q&A for their own teams.  Their managers under them can do the same, with each leader rolling down these same big picture questions to their people, making the answers more granular for their particular group until there is alignment top to bottom.

The big picture questions should eventually be answered by everyone—right down to the receptionist, the photo researcher, the copywriter.  Because, this is really important stuff. Everyone on a team should be clear on it. The measure of success here is that everybody up and down an organization can answer these simple questions and sound like their bosses and peers.

Last week I heard back from the senior marketing VP about her company’s progress.   This executive—who is normally not effusive—said, “It’s a miracle!” Her division is using these big picture questions to clarify roles and set priorities.  They are actively making sure that everybody’s projects line up with the strategy for the company.

The big picture is not the only issue that must be clarified in a change.  Next week we’ll cover the knowledge transfer step that exposes areas of worker un-readiness and clarifies job roles and performance standards in a change.

SUMMARY: To be a more successful change manager, have your team answer the Big Picture questions about your organization and its strategy.  When answered throughout your team top level to bottom in cascading fashion, these questions will clarify employee roles in supporting the strategy, help define boundaries, and get everyone focusing on the right priorities.

COMING NEXT WEEK—PART 3: A knowledge transfer tool for exposing workforce risks and identifying knowledge silos of critical expertise and skills needed by your team to do their daily work.

Whether due to reorganizations or mergers, launching new strategies or major tech rollouts, rapid growth or process overhauls, organizational change can strain a workforce and confuse expectations.  This leads to discouraged and less productive employees – the best of whom will leave if it doesn’t get better quickly.  Knowledge transfer—with its clear processes for workforce risk management, for moving critical knowledge and skills within a workforce, and for clarity and accountability of performance standards—has proven to be a crucial element in successfully driving change at the worker level.  Here’s why:

Knowledge Transfer Provides the Structure, Tools, and Decision Points to Implement Change and Measure Progress at the Worker Level

In every organizational change there are those who know and those who need to know. There are people who can do a job the (new) right way and others who need to learn to replicate that. Closing this gap is what the field of knowledge transfer is all about.  At the Fortune 500 retailer I’m working with, knowledge transfer is going to help them drive through the storm of change in three specifics ways:

1. Knowledge transfer will clearly define roles in a change.

   First, the knowledge transfer process requires simple, straightforward answers to a few crucial workforce questions that will derail change if left unclear.  “Who REALLY knows what the daily work is for a given team or unit and how to do it, including the technical and professional skills needed on the job?” “Which workers now need to learn critical knowledge and skills in order to do their job the right way in this change?”  “Who is going to set the standard that exemplifies the right way to do each technical and professional skill needed on the job?”  “Who will be the process manager who champions the new standards for skills of this team, and holds employees accountable by tracking progress?”

2. Knowledge transfer will set clear employee expectations.

   In the knowledge transfer process, management clarifies for employees such things as what level of consistency is expected for new behaviors and job skills of workers.  Does a skill need to be performed consistent to a set standard for every person in a given job role on a team?  In the division?  Between countries?  The knowledge transfer process will also clarify priorities for employees.  Which new expectations are more critical right now than others?  Where does meeting the standard for these critical changed behaviors rank in importance to other daily work?  How many hours a week should the manager, expert-mentor, and employee-learner devote to developing this new way of doing things?

3. Knowledge transfer will ask employees to measurably demonstrate their understanding of the “big picture,” and uncover ongoing change management issues.

   When the knowledge transfer process is used to support major change, the process provides a structure in which employees are asked the Big Picture questions as they relate to and affect daily work. These are questions like:  “Who is our customer?” “What are the services we provide now and which ones, if any, need to change as we implement the current strategy?”  “How does our unit or division measure our success now and how might that change in the future?”  “What is the relevant history that affects current strategy?” and “What are three things your unit or division is doing to support the strategy?”  There are at least nine of these big picture questions that every employee should be able to answer during a period of change—and knowledge transfer enables employees see the clear connection between their answers and the job expectations and standards set for daily work.  Where an employee cannot answer these big picture questions, leadership knows they are going to have problems.  Where an employee can answer them, it indicates the worker is more likely to exercise good judgment and make daily decisions that will support the end goal.

The full knowledge transfer process is explained here—and in the next three parts of this Change Management and Knowledge Transfer blog series I’ll go into more detail about that process and how its tools deliver the above three points and give leaders the accountability structure to manage change.

SUMMARY: Major change can wreak havoc on the preparedness, productivity, and morale of a workforce.  For successful change management, use knowledge transfer to give your change clarity at the worker level, to empower employees with the knowledge and skills necessary to make the change, and to set job standards to track progress and enable accountability.

I was recently on site with a client who said it like this, as he pointed across the room at a few coworkers who were looking the other way:

CLIENT: “She gets it, he gets it,… he gets it,… she doesn’t get it, and he definitely doesn’t get it.” 
ME:  “What is the ‘it’?” 
CLIENT:  “How to be innovative.”
ME:  “How do you know?” 
CLIENT:  “Oh, I just know.”

Now, in a perfect world, this would not be a problem.  We’d only work with and promote people who “get it” and we’d run off people who “don’t.”  The trouble for this team was that they had recently changed their strategy and needed to repurpose nearly a hundred people from old jobs that were “low innovation” and move them to new roles that required “high innovation.”  These people had an average tenure well beyond ten years.  They were high quality, highly trained employees.  Certainly some would be successful over time in the new role, and some would have to be replaced—but replacing them all at once with new hires that had proven innovation skills was not an option.  Still, these hundred employees needed to move toward a new, more innovative way of approaching their work, and they needed to do it ASAP.

Key Questions: Who “Gets It” Now, and What Do They Do to Show That?
As I’ve said many times, knowledge transfer starts with knowing who you want to replicate in your workforce and what you want these experts to teach.  So, the first question is: “Who are the people in this organization that seem to embody “innovation” at a very high level?” My team sat down with this client and together we made this list of Who—then we went to work deconstructing some of the actions and behaviors of these innovators.  That’s the second question: “What do my most innovative people actually DO that makes others call them “innovative” and that has contributed to breakthroughs?”

Turns out that with a good knowledge transfer process we could have these innovation experts teach others what they themselves do instinctively.  In effect, as we’ve seen with this client, we can expect most employees to learn how to act like innovators even if they don’t have that as a native skill.  In this way we can get the most out of the team we have, bringing everyone up to their highest potential.

Breaking Down the Way to Get a Breakthrough
As a resource for you, below is some of what we discovered the expert innovators were doing that others could emulate.  (I recommend that you still follow the above process with your teams to supplement and adjust this list in ways relevant to your business.)

• Present an idea. In what form and forum?  Timing?  Level of detail?  To whom?
• Respond to others’ ideas. Recognize good ideas (publicly and/or privately) and help shepherd them forward.
• Identify and mitigate roadblocks to presenting process improvement opportunities.
• Devote time in meetings for ideas to be captured and defined enough to be moved to a different forum.
• Schedule specific time to conduct “blue sky” sessions with a broadly defined scope (e.g., improvements to a feature set in a core product).
• Provide research and development time in the project schedule, adding this effort to team and/or individual performance reviews.
• On every project, make a plan (and owner) to capture lessons learned while they are fresh in everyone’s minds.
• Summarize and present the lessons learned in every gate review (not just at the end).
• Physically go to sites where the action is (customers, manufacturing, operations, service, etc.) so you see the needs first-hand.
• Research other industries—their processes, ways to use materials, etc.—and figure out which ones to apply in your industry.
• Talk to Product Support Specialists, Product Managers, Marketing/Sales team members to understand customer needs/desires and the product’s competitive challenges.
• Lead discussions of best practices with peers—and define, adopt, and communicate the best way doing things.
• Read trade journals and business publications; attend trade shows, seminars, workshops, and conferences with a stated goal of uncovering opportunities for innovation.
• Read patents.
• Teach how to feed new ideas into an existing process to team members, vendors, customers, and other teams.
• Use a rigorous process of analyzing and filtering ideas to make sure that the output of technology development brainstorming is high quality.
• Conduct design reviews using a defined and timely process that specifically looks at ways to innovate.
• Offer and encourage attendance at brownbag sessions outlining technology or process developments.
• Document topics and ideas on a Wiki or the equivalent.
• Don’t be afraid to fail—recognize people who are trying new things and challenging the status quo.

After identifying behaviors and skills that lead to innovation in your organization, the next step is to write a clear, date driven plan for transferring this “how to” from the expert innovator to coworker apprentices.  The third and final step is to show your experts how to teach to others their secret sauce for innovation; our Knowledge Transfer Workshop gives fifteen proven techniques for transferring knowledge and skills to peers during fast-paced daily work.

CONCLUSION: While we will always value the innate innovator in our workforce, most coworkers CAN be taught the practices and behaviors that lead to more innovation on the job.  By breaking down what leads to a breakthrough, and teaching this through knowledge transfer, leaders will get the most out of every employee.

But here’s something that this article and business leaders often overlook: when it comes to unique critical knowledge siloed in one person, aging workers are not the only risk.

Knowledge Risks Are Not Age-Dependent

As my comment posted to the article states, the real problem is that most organizations have employees who have critical, high-priority knowledge and skills that no one else in the company has. Knowledge transfer is the solution, but readers of this blog—and any leader tasked with managing workforce talent—need to start diversifying who they consider their “mentors” and “apprentices” in a workforce in order to reduce their organization’s reliance on any one person—regardless of their age.  Unique knowledge is a business risk that should be mitigated for all highly critical skills.   Remember, retirement is not the only reason employees leave….

To learn more about our firm’s simple knowledge transfer solution, see my recent post on knowledge transfer in action.

This week my firm is in its second month of working with a team of senior leaders who are collectively responsible for building a $400 million industrial rig.  Some of the leaders are in the U.S. where the project was designed; others are offshore where the project will be built.

The team needs to reduce their risk because too many of their leaders are new to this type of construction project and there are many unanswered questions and unclear expectations as they kick off the 3-year effort.

In presenting my company’s 3-step Knowledge Transfer Solution and explaining how we help an organization’s experts to transfer their knowledge to coworkers, we heard some familiar concerns that I thought I’d address here in the blog.

Q:  This feels pretty arbitrary.  Who set the bar and said that I am “at risk?”  I’m only moderately sure that our company’s so-called “experts” are even clear about what they want!

A: As I’ve said many times, you can’t ask someone to transfer knowledge until you know that the right person is transferring the right knowledge. Filling out a workforce risk assessment tool like our Knowledge Silo Matrix (KSM) ensures that the right person(s) will be designated to mentor.  Filling out a Skill Development Plan (SDP) makes sure that the right knowledge is targeted for transfer to those who lack it. The process reveals critical knowledge gaps in a team and forces the experts/mentors to be very clear about expectations for the work, so their resulting knowledge transfer sessions with coworkers/apprentices are more fruitful.

The Skill Development Plan is customized for each individual apprentice in a way that is targeted to the current situation.  The plan is customized relative to the:

• risk that was identified in the KSM;
• existing workload of the team;
• prior experience of the apprentice;
• availability of the mentor; and the
• availability of formal training or other resources.

In this way it is the opposite of arbitrary. It is completely personalized and relevant.

Also, why an employee is marked as an “apprentice” becomes very clear when we (or their manager) sit down and customize an SDP for them.  The employee can look at each line item in the plan and see what knowledge gaps they have and what they are doing differently than their mentor expects.

[Choosing which professional should be a team’s standard bearer—the “right person” to mentor—is ultimately leadership’s call, guided by the KSM.  For more on making this decision, see my blog post on setting work standards & consistency in job roles.]

Q:  I’m also worried that this is all very academic.  My job is hands-on, technical, and constantly changing.  How can the knowledge transfer process respond to such a dynamic environment?

The knowledge transfer process is intended to happen on the job and in the course of doing regular daily work.  It was developed and refined in real-life, heated business environments—not an academic ones.  The training that apprentices receive is “just in time” and customized to the appropriate place in any project cycle.  Formal training does not typically have this kind of flexibility; it often has to speak to a much broader timeline and cover a more generalized curriculum.

And, the test questions that we use with the SPD to ensure that the wisdom and tacit knowledge are transferred are atypical of most “certifications.”  We’re not only asking about the “steps in the process,” we’re also asking much broader questions that get at, for example, the problems to avoid, political issues, opportunities for innovation, escalation paths, and rules.  Your expert chooses the test questions for each skill (with our guidance about types of questions that will get at deeper wisdom),  and then the mentor-apprentice discussions around the test questions during their sessions ensure that the knowledge transfer is extremely practical and targeted, not academic.

CONCLUSION: Knowledge transfer is a practical, on-the-job process that uses clear steps and tools to reduce the subjectivity and remove the arbitrary from the task of getting a workforce prepared and productive.  Clarify this with your teams and use these answers to dispel concerns.

Chosen for the role by the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship for the New West and the Alderson Program in Entrepreneurship, Trautman will spend a week in February with students and faculty, sharing his experiences and expertise earned from more than two decades of entrepreneurial endeavors.

The program, which hosts a successful entrepreneur in residence each semester, provides students with learning opportunities for real life, practical wisdom on starting and running businesses.  Former MSU Entrepreneurs-in-Residence include Shannon Stowell, currently the president of the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), and Mr. Gannon, lifelong entrepreneur and international advisory board member of the Global Compact Cities Programme.

From Feb 20 – 24, 2012 Steve Trautman will be at the university in Bozeman, MO, putting his speaking and knowledge transfer skills to work as he teaches and inspires some of tomorrow’s business leaders.

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The Steve Trautman Co. are experts in knowledge transfer.  The company provides business executives with the simplest, most relevant, and quick solutions for knowledge transfer and workforce risk management.  For nearly two decades their proven tools have helped Fortune 500s and 1000s—in industries such as high tech, manufacturing, finance, energy, government, and communications—assess risk, internally share knowledge, and reduce the loss of talent and experience.

Steve Trautman is corporate America’s leading knowledge transfer expert. With two decades of application inside blue chips and Fortune 1000s, his pioneering work in the field of knowledge transfer and related risk management tools are now the nationally-recognized gold standard. He has written two books, speaks internationally, and is known for a high-energy style that combines humor, street smarts, and board room wisdom.

The program, which hosts a successful entrepreneur in residence each semester, provides students with learning opportunities for real life, practical wisdom on starting and running businesses.  Former MSU Entrepreneurs-in-Residence include Shannon Stowell, currently the president of the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), and Mr. Gannon, lifelong entrepreneur and international advisory board member of the Global Compact Cities Programme.

So, for the rest of the week, Steve will be in Bozeman, MT, putting his speaking and knowledge transfer skills to work as he teaches and hopefully inspires (and gets inspired by) some of tomorrow’s business leaders.